I just wanted to quickly post about our visit to Pete’s last weekend. It was a somewhat spur-of-the-moment lunch decision, but we wanted to go because it’s right nearby in Clarendon, we had never been before, and we had heard about it’s former Top 100 status.

It turns out New Haven style pizza (“apizza”) is very different and fascinating. You can read about it on their website here. Pete’s itself was pretty clean and modern, but I must admit that the pizza did not look like it was going to be very appealing.

Pete's New Haven Style Apizza & a Sorbillo

I ended up really enjoying my veggie slice though, and Chris liked his sausage slice too. As advertised, the pizza did taste somewhat burnt on the outside, but then was also soft on the inside… kind of strange. I don’t think there was actual truffle extract involved in my veggie slice (the mushrooms must have just been very nicely sautéed), but it seemed like it was there as I ate. In my opinion, the more mushroom flavor, the better! So thumbs up for that.

We also split their Original Sorbillo (“A rectangular shaped pizza filled with Salumi, ricotta, mozzarella”). Yum.

We liked Pete’s, but I don’t know if we’ll go there again. New Haven Style Apizza was intriguing, but just wasn’t exciting enough to give us many more cravings for the future.

Earlier this week, I decided to tweak my mother’s amazing lasagna recipe in order to include some ingredients that I’ve been loving lately. Here are two things I’ve been obsessed with since honeymooning in Italy: prosciutto and arrabiata sauce. Prosciutto, according to Caitlin Fitzgibbons on HelloGiggles, is “like ham that went to university abroad — sophisticated and cultured.” Love it. Arrabiata sauce is spicy red sauce. I learned in Italy that arrabiata actually means angry! The Italian language is so beautiful.

So here is a rough recipe of my Prosciutto Lasagna with Arrabiata Sauce….

INGREDIENTS

13 x 9 pan

6 oz prosciutto

2 jars of Arrabiata sauce (I only had one, so when I realized I needed more, I added some ground cayenne pepper & red pepper flakes to a jar of normal sauce)

Package of lasagna noodles

1 pint ricotta cheese

12 oz mozzarella cheese block

(I also threw in some fontina cheese, since it had it on hand.)

Parsley

Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

Ingredients.

DIRECTIONS

Apply a thin layer of sauce at the bottom of the pan.

Then 3 long noodles. (I usually cook the noodles, but happened to have the oven-ready kind on hand.)

Alternate blobs of ricotta mixture (which is ricotta mixed with the eggs and parsley) and mozzarella across noodles.

Add sauce on top, just to cover, along with proscuitto. Sprinkle parmesan.

Repeat layering order, ending with sauce and some parmesan cheese on top.